Photography Blogs

Street Photography: Lightroom Presets with a Vintage Twist

Something that I haven’t pursued in a very long time is that of capturing the look and feel of life on the streets. Just last week, I was given the challenge of preparing a five minute talk on the topic of my choosing for a video presentation. Preparation time for this talk was just under two hours. I knew that I would prepare a talk on photography but I was hard pressed on deciding the content. Then it dawned on me that I hadn’t shot any street scenes in a number of years – and so my mind was made up. As I said, I had a little less than two hours, so I hopped on the street car and headed to the busiest place I could think of – the central train station in Munich.

Original photo of the Street Car

I wanted to present a nice cross section of photographic techniques for my talk and so I was willing to try all kinds of experiments outside of my normal “comfort zone”. In the short time frame I had allotted myself for the shoot (30-40 minutes), I took just over a hundred photographs. I chose to shoot high-contrast black and white images to enhance the drama of the shots, so I set my Canon 30D to shoot JPG (B&W) and RAW. Upon completing the shots, I rushed back to the seminar, quickly sorted my shots and delivered my talk.

Afterwards, when I got my photos back into Lightroom, I saw that I had a number of relatively interesting shots and started developing them. Well, one thing led to another, and I came up with the small collection of six (6) new Lightroom presets that I’d like to share with you.

Exploring the Street Photography Presets

While developing the shots in Lightroom, I was going after a super high-contrast look that quite frankly adds a certain amount of drama to any photograph. I started out with a basic preset – black levels cranked way up, recovery and fill sliders adjusted to match the shot I was developing. Once I tried the “look” on a number of shots it became apparent that I would need a few different levels of contrast to match the majority of shots I had taken.

It was actually quite “by accident” that I ended up creating the vintage look you see in some of these shots. I was jumping back and forth between the new presets I had developed and I accidentally clicked on a brown-toned preset I had recently developed for some portrait work. I stopped, took a look, and liked what I saw.

So what you’re seeing here is the evolutionary development of a brown/sepia vintage preset that can be toggled on/off to co-exist beautifully with the various high contrast looks!

This is one of the photos I will use to show the various presets I’ve developed for this collection. It has a good range of tones and colors, although it was taken on an overcast day.

The base preset of the collection – Focus – Street Life. It basically enhances the blacks, edges up the fill and recovery sliders, sets contrast to 100%, introduces a touch of negative clarity and rounds out with a good mix of sharpening and noise reduction.

The next level – Focus – Street Life (Hard). In this preset the clarity slider sweeps decidely into the plus range to a value of 80. Adjustments to the tone curve start advancing those shadows WAY into the negative range. Sharpening and noise reduction remain the same.

I’m now switching to another sample photo so that we can see the progression better. Here the photo without any preset effect.

The next level – Focus – Street Life (Harder). In this preset the recovery, fill and black sliders are advanced – almost to the values you would need to create an HDR effect. (you’ll be able to see the HDR effect better in another sample below) Adjustments to the tone curve continue into the negative range. Sharpening and noise reduction remain the same.

The last level – Focus – Street Life (Soft). Now just so that things don’t get too crazy, I’ve included a softer version. This could be used in those photos where a subdued effect is desired.

Now you’ll see in the screen capture above that there’s two presets I haven’t touched on. They can be used in conjunction with the other 4 presets to toggle a “Vintage Effect” on or off.

Shown here is the Street Life (Soft) + Street Life (Vintage On) effect. Just keep in mind you can toggle the vintage mode on for each of the four presets. We’ll see more examples below.

Here’s another example of two presets used together. Shown here is the Street Life (Harder) preset applied to this photo. In order to turn on the “Vintage” effect you simply need to apply the “Vintage On” preset on top of the other preset. (as shown below)

Shown here is another photo with the Street Life preset applied. To add the vintage effect you apply the “Vintage On” preset on top of the other preset. (as shown below)

Since the Vintage preset is already applied, we can switch over to another Street Life preset to see how it will look. Shown here is the same photo with the Street Life (Harder) preset applied.

And by clicking on the “Vintage Off” preset we can see how the same photo looks without the “Vintage” effect. To remove the vintage effect you apply the “Vintage Off” preset on top of the other preset. (as shown below)

Download the Lightroom “Street Life” Presets

Well I think you get the idea how these new presets work.

Download the Focus Street Life Presets

I know that many of you like to upload your photos to Flickr or other photo sharing groups. I too am very active on Flickr in the Presetting Lightroom group and I’d really like to see what kinds of great shots you produce with these presets. If you use these presets and upload your photos to Flickr or elsewhere, how about “tagging” your photos with “Focus-StreetLife” as a keyword in Lightroom. That way I can search Flickr for the keyword and see the shots where these presets have been used.

Installing the Presets

Installing Presets in Lightroom 2 – this video is for those that need a little help in installing Lightroom presets. The video also gives you some tips for preset folder management and backing up your presets.

There is a rather erroneous assumption made here that Street Photography has to be in black and white. Street Photography is a particular approach to making pictures in public places…not a technical one.

Nick, no assumptions were made here whatsoever! I chose the high-contrast black and white look since it enhanced the photos that were shot on this overcast day. These Lightroom presets were developed for this shoot and I am very pleased to share the resultant presets with the lightroom and photographic communities.

very helpful tips and presets.
until now street photography is one of my weakness since 1 year involving in this photography things. i don’t really know wha my problem is with this street photography…i felt like a little bit shy and not so brave to take picture at public…can you tell me how to overcome those feelings?
by the way
i also think that black and white makes the street photos more lively
cheers,

Like Ruslin, I’m very shy about taking people’s photos in public unless it’s part of a large event where there’s so much commotion that they’re less-likely to notice me and it’s expected that lots of people will take photos. Part of it’s worrying that they’ll feel I’m invading their privacy, but another part is fear of confrontation. On the other hand, I have a Flickr-buddy who does it all the time, getting some very nice street portraits where he actively asks them to take their photo. I prefer to make candids anyway. But I’m very hesitant to ask or shoot unless I’m surrounded by a crowd. This is even though I’m normally very outgoing and I’m middle-aged.

As Ruslin asks, can you blog about how us shy photographers can get better this personal aspect of taking street photos?

Hi, I’m now starting to learn LR; first thing I want to do is to install some presets, so I downloaded this ones, but I see they can only be installed in a pc not in a Mac. Any solution to that ???
Congratulations for the job

Hi Nalik,
I’ve noticed that as well. I’m guessing it has something to do with my Internet Providers server. I’m seeing the same thing. I will have to contact them tomorrow to see if they’ve changed anything on the weekend. Everything was working until yesterday and I haven’t changed a thing on the site.
Cheers, Markus

I’m having a problem downloading any of the preseets. I’ve tried several of them but the download link just cycles me back to the main page. Is there someting I’m not doing correctly or overlooking? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks